Site Mobile Navigation

Irish Poised to Revisit Abortion Law

DUBLIN — Abortion is back on the agenda in Ireland after a European Court of Human Rights ruling last year found the state in violation of its own Constitution on the matter. Ireland’s abortion laws are the strictest in Europe, but the Irish government may be about to address the previously unapproachable: whether to loosen restrictions on ending a pregnancy.

A woman who has never gone public with her name, and thus can be identified only as “Ms. C,” as in court papers, and who suffered from a rare form of cancer, won her case in the human rights court after she couldn’t find an Irish doctor willing to tell her if her life was at risk if she continued her pregnancy.

In response to the ruling, the Irish government has set up an expert group that includes prominent obstetricians, psychiatrists and lawyers to advise it on its options. Members of the group, who all declined to be interviewed for this article, must report back to the government by summer.

The European ruling, coupled with the dwindling power of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, has campaigners for abortion rights hopeful that change may be afoot.

Catholic morality has influenced Irish social policy in the past, but Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s speech attacking the Vatican last summer following another damning report on clerical sex abuse, and the subsequent shuttering of the Irish Embassy to the Holy See, marked a sea change in the relationship between church and state.

Abortion was illegal in all circumstances until the situation was thrown into confusion after the “X” case in 1992, when a 14-year-old girl was prevented from leaving the country to have an abortion after she became pregnant from rape.

Twenty years ago this month, the Irish Supreme Court ruled that there was a constitutional right to an abortion where there was a “real and substantial risk” to the life of the mother (the girl involved was suicidal). Despite debate in the news media to mark the 20th anniversary, no legislation has been drawn up to outline when a woman is entitled to a legal abortion in Ireland, so the law remains unclear.

Women like “Ms. C” who seek abortions for health reasons join the estimated 150,000 Irish women who have traveled to Britain to obtain an abortion since it was legalized there in 1967.

Last year, a woman named Michelle Harte, who was terminally ill with cancer, went public with her story, highlighting how Irish abortion laws affect women with serious health issues. She traveled to Britain after being denied permission for a legal abortion in Ireland. Speaking to The Irish Times, she recalled being physically helped onto the plane. “Anyone else who was even half as sick as I am shouldn’t have to uproot themselves and fly over to England. It’s not fair, and it’s not humane.” Ms. Harte has subsequently died.

Last November, Dr. Mark Murphy, a general practitioner and medical trainer, published a survey of 500 active general practitioners and 250 in training. His results suggested that attitudes in the medical community were shifting, although it remained hard to generalize. He said 52 percent of the 750 respondents favored abortion rights, 24 percent believed abortion should be allowed only in a narrow set of circumstances and 11 percent supported a complete ban.

“Doctors are pro-choice because they see the impact the law is having on Irish women,” said Dr. Mary Favier, a spokeswoman for the advocacy group Doctors for Choice. “Historically, Irish doctors have not covered themselves in glory in what they have said to women who have had abortions, or the role they have taken in the media, but that has changed dramatically in the last 20 years.”

The Irish public has moved away from conservative values on a range of issues like homosexuality, divorce and same-sex civil partnerships since the 1990s, but how this more liberal attitude is shaping the abortion debate is unclear.

Opinion polls vary greatly depending on who commissions them. A 2011 survey from an anti-abortion group asserted that 61 percent of respondents wanted constitutional protection for the unborn, while a 2010 poll from a group supporting abortion rights claimed that 75 percent wanted Irish abortion laws to be liberalized. Anti-abortion groups are confident that their views are still held by a majority in Ireland.

“There is deep-seated opposition to abortion in Ireland,” said Niamh Ui Bhriain of the Life Institute. “If pro-abortion campaigners believe that Irish people are behind a move to legalize abortion, bring on the referendum.”

In an increasingly secular Ireland, the influence of the Vatican is in decline, and a litany of sex abuse scandals have left the public deeply disillusioned with the Catholic Church.

While not the sole reason for opposition to abortion, Ireland’s Catholic bedrock has traditionally been a factor behind its abortion laws.

Patsy McGarry, religious affairs correspondent with The Irish Times, said attitudes toward abortion had changed in recent years. “Undoubtedly the decline of the Catholic Church has loosened up opposition to abortion,” he said in an interview. “The church’s stance on abortion is very clear, very rigid. There are thousands of women in Ireland, indeed tens of thousands, who have had abortions, so there is a more nuanced position on the matter than there was in the 1980s.”

There has long been a concern that joining the European Union would eventually lead to more liberal abortion legislation. When Ireland signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1991, it inserted a clause to safeguard Irish abortion laws from E.U. interference.

For anti-abortion groups, the European human rights court ruling has confirmed their fears, particularly when the country as a whole is beholden to international financial help to keep afloat.

“At this time, when the E.U. and I.M.F. are actually running our country and we have lost every bit of sovereignty, the last thing people want is an outside agency making an intrusive judgement,” said Ms. Bhriain. “What we are seeing here is abortion campaigners using external courts in a bid to have abortion imposed on Irish people. If our laws make us different from everyone else in the European Union, I am glad of that difference.”